Eating plantains
2007-08-19 - 7:08 p.m.

Looks like I was sucessfully able to upload this new layout today. Whoo!

The theme this time is the Japanese maple. The little symbols on the right are the Japanese symbols for the months of the year, starting with January at the top. I've actually had those symbols in a folder on one of my hard drives for so long now I don't remember where I found them, but I held onto them thinking that I'd be able to use them for something at some point.

This was grocery day for us and I decided to try something new today - plantains. I was just browsing through the fruits and vegetables and noticed these plantains had little stickers on them with suggestions about how to prepare them, one of which was deep frying. We've got that little deep fryer that B was given for his birthday last year, so I decided to give it a try. I found several recipes online and they were all basically the same; take off the peel, slice it, fry the slices for 2-3 minutes, smash them down into flat circles, fry them again for another minute or two, then eat.

I think they turned out pretty well. They taste a bit like potatoes. Next time I think I'll try another recipe I saw that called for soaking the slices in water with garlic and salt first.

I went to K0hl's during the week last week because that $50 Dad gave me for my birthday was burning a hole in my pocket. Actually what happened was, B and I went over to Se@rs last Monday to return all the extra shoes that L@nds End sent and while I was there I saw a purse I really liked. I was going to go back over there and get it, but I decided to do some shopping around online first and see what else was out there.

I ended up deciding on this purse from K0hl's because I need something bigger than what I orginally saw at Se@rs:

I wanted something that won't be constantly falling off my shoulder, like my current purse, and something big enough to hold a bottle of water, my wallet, my medications, snacks and other stuff I'll want on the plane and in the car when we're driving from Vegas to Kingman. I think this will work very well, plus it's cute. :)

Work has been a little slow in coming this past week, but that's typical for this time of year. Popular time for vacations and stuff, so not as many people are sending out tapes to be transcribed. Fortunately my checking account is looking okay, so it won't hurt me too bad as long as the shortage doesn't last too long.

I recently got in touch with an old friend from my hometown, whom I haven't seen or spoken to in probably about 6 years. I had a dream that I saw him and another friend at the house where I grew up, which made me wonder how he is and what's going on with him, so I did a little searching online and found he has a Mysp@ce page. I didn't know if he'd be interested in talking to me, because I was sure he'd heard about how I left and the circumstances surrounding that, but I decided to give it a shot and emailed him. I was happily surprised that he answered and we've corresponded several times since then. He genuinely seemed to be happy to hear from me and said he wants to keep in touch, so that was really nice. He said he'd heard about me moving from my ex-husband, who was drunk at the time, so he took what he said with a grain of salt. I explained that I did what I did because I felt it was time to make ME happy and he seemed to understand where I was coming from.

I hired this guy to work in the store where I was the assistant manager about 10 years ago, when he was right out of high school. He was a friend of a friend and I often hung out with them and other people from the store during non-working hours. Now he's married and has a 7-month-old baby girl. In fact, the last time I was out with him was when he was first dating the woman he's now married to, so I met her back then.

That's the news for now.

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